June 20, 2007

KickApps: White Label Social Networking That Delivers

Duncan Riley

24 comments »

KickApps has continued to grow in the face of strong competition from high profile startups such as Ning.

TechCrunch first covered KickApps in July 2006. I had the opportunity to speak with CEO Alex Blum this week. Blum was previously President and COO of JumpTV and before that Vice President of Product Marketing for AOL.

KickApps’ numbers aren’t as impressive as Nings. KickApps powers over 3000 social networking sites compared to Nings 67,000+, yet Blum believes that KickApp’s offering is a superior platform.

The overall KickApps experience is thorough. Nothing obvious is left out. White label sites have a full choice of 13 features; profiles, guest books, video and feeds are some of the options. The backend is simple to use and smart at the same time. The moderation of videos option doesn’t just present the uploaded video; numerous screenshots are automatically generated to immediately give a reviewer a good idea of what is contained in each video.

Widget/ embedding support is extensive and delivered complete with DNS masked domain; users never link to KickApps itself, the specific domain is always presented in the embedding code. It’s a small thing but one that defines KickApps in comparison to Ning.

KickApps also offers an open API and developer kit. Blum told me that whilst most sites simply use the features offered, a number of high level users have implemented the API on their sites, delivering a custom solution.

KickApps comes in two flavors and the difference between the two only comes down to advertising. Free users get full range of functionality with KickApps taking a part of each site for advertising. This doesn’t prevent free users from advertising themselves, simply a portion of each site must include a KickApps ads. The paid version is perhaps remarkably not sold on a licensed basis, KickApps charges a CPM rate per site served, meaning that less successful sites pay a lower rate. Blum believes that this model is fairer in that sites pay proportionality to their success, and therefore everyone wins; it therefore becomes in KickApps best interest to offer the best possible platform and experience to maximise revenue.

Overall it’s a great offering. Strictly from a publishers view point the ability to keep your own domain on top of the white label service is compelling, and the feature set is remarkably easy to use and set up. The company has numerous existing deals and will officially announce a tie up with Vibe Magazine today. Given what I’ve seen I have little doubt that despite the competition KickApps will go from strength to strength, it’s a white label social networking platform that delivers.

Sphere It

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telemac0 » KickApps - Rich Media Community Builder

April 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm

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YouTubeSearcher

June 20th, 2007 at 5:55 am

I hope they are not hanging there differentiation hat on DNS masking. With apache virtual hosts this is so easy to do, and at no cost to the DNS masker (ie kickapps). Ning offers this, but charges (again, no cost to them).
Jason Alba

June 20th, 2007 at 6:50 am

What other players are in this space besides these two? And is anyone else “social networked-out”??

Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
… self-serve job security …
Jason Jenkins

June 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am

KickApps, here we come!! We are about to flood your site with urban content. Jason Jenkins
The Abstract Surrealist
http://www.abstract10.com
Tom Donchez

June 20th, 2007 at 7:32 am

Most DNS panels would let you forward to Ning’s sub-domain, so you can set up your own masking very easily for the cost of the domain. KickApps does appear to have a superior service though; good write up.
Concrete Stain

June 20th, 2007 at 7:47 am

- I am surprise there isnt a Mediawiki.org - type open source company for a social networking platform

- DNS masking - I believe hurts SEO ..
MajorNetworkNews

June 20th, 2007 at 8:19 am

DNS masking does hurt SEO as google and others look at IP address of the server (not just omain name) to make their ranking.

This helps filter out the spam sites that may have 1000 spam sites on one server with 1 IP address but 1000 unique domain names.
iclic

June 20th, 2007 at 8:20 am

Is there any open-source that does the same thing?
Kyle Ford

June 20th, 2007 at 9:46 am

As a Product Manager at Ning, I just wanted to correct a few inaccuracies that were mentioned in the article…

1) We currently have over 67,000 social networks on Ning today (vs. the 30,000 in the story).

2) For our optional $4.95/month fee for anyone interested, we enable domain mapping for both networks and widgets (and have since December of 2005). Our full list of premium services is at: http://www.ning.com/about/businesses.html

Thanks!
Willy

June 20th, 2007 at 9:47 am

You should try http://commongate.com (Subdomains, DNS masking, Layouts, etc…)
Miles

June 20th, 2007 at 10:11 am

There are a number of open-source options that allow for social networking like features (www.drupal.org) but require a technical setup.

There are also companies (like us) that provide a solution that is between KickApps & Ning and a full-on custom built site where they customize their base platform for you - http://www.smallworldlabs.com.
Ben Strackany

June 20th, 2007 at 10:39 am

There are also a number of free/cheap/open source SNS solutions. I listed a few (a lot?) here:

http://www.developmentnow.com/.....tware.aspx

Miles is right in that there is a balance of options for different needs.

You could start with an existing (free or commercial) app & customize it a little (or a lot); you could build your own using Drupal, Joomla, Rails, etc.; or you go with a turnkey provider like Ning, KickApps, Me, etc.

But there are a lot of customization options no matter which route you take. Only some of those options need a programmer.

I just finished up a SNS project using an open-source platform tied to a few other popular open-source products (a wiki & a blogging engine). For me, leveraging an existing platform was worth it, but certainly not the right approach for everyone.

I have other colleages who just use Ning & are happy with it, using it as almost the next community step beyond having official company forums.

People can contact me offline if they want further elaboration — this comment is already pretty big.
John

June 20th, 2007 at 11:30 am

I have been doing a lot of research on social network platforms in the past 4 month. Last week I was at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica Ca and saw Kickapps their, also they were two other players their pluck.com and Pringo.com. I had my tech team dig into each platform. Pluck is only for publishers and start up cost is over $100k. Kickapps cpm advertising is $4 and that’s really high, also their demos are not so user friendly. Pringo.com people showed me couple of their demos, they have tons of features and mobile video broadcasting which I need for my modeling site. I made a deal with them last week for my sport site they are nice people to work with. My first choice would be pluck if I had the money I would start with them but they are way too expensive, second choice pringo.com they seem to care about the project the most and want my business the most, also they are non hosted which means I can have my users on any servers and they do load balance as well at no charge. , then I would say ning since their pricing is so low but sub domains don’t get indexed in search engines and I didn’t see them in Digital hollywood, also I saw a video on the ceo explaining bandwidth cost and it did not sound realistic for the amount they charge you, social network sites use a lot of bandwidth Ning is good for people that don’t want more than 100 users, kickapps pricing cpm is way too high and I don’t want google adwords ads on my pages, I don’t want people controlling my site. I’m sure within couple of years a open source will be built.

John
Crowd Factory

June 20th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

There is a range of options available for the amazing breadth of demand for social media. KA and Ning somewhat similar in that the ease of implementation is appealing but the limitations eventually come back to bite. Crowd Factory competes with pluck at the higher end and consistently comes out ahead when a longer term view towards more flexibility and less cookie cutter requirements drive the decision. This space is still quite nascent, and there’s room for a variety of solutions - the caution is to watch out for painting your property into a corner.
Kyle Ford

June 20th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Hey Jon and Crowd Factory-

While we certainly have lots of small, very-focused networks, size is absolutely not a constraint, and we offer cheap bandwidth/storage expansion options should your network take off. CW’s One Tree Hill network and Rawkus Records’ My Rawkus are two great examples of larger branded networks running on the Ning platform (but mapped with their own domains).

As for being “painted into a corner,” we offer any site owner the ability (for free) to take their network’s full source code and uploaded content anywhere they’d like at any time.
Lance Weatherby

June 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

The Port offers white label services. They seem to be getting a bit of traction with a model like CareerBuilder in the newspaper space.
Jeff Haynie

June 20th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

CrowdVine is another option is you want low-cost social networking-in-a-box. http://www.crowdvine.com

We used it for SoCon07 (where Crowdvine debuted) and also FooCamp is using it for their social network.
Marshall Kirkpatrick

June 20th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

What on earth did poor Marc Center do to so often be left off of lists like this? Anyway, I’ve been hoping someone would do a follow up on KickApps as I just started seeing them advertise - months after I wrote about them and figured they had closed up shop. Glad I was wrong.
astrientlabs

June 20th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

I am also quietly developing a turn-key social networking platform. Although it offers virtual hosting and email forwarding, as well as the more common features such as forums and blogs, the key feature will be its mobile application. It is in private beta and will be public in the coming weeks. For a peek visit http://www.cliqcafe.com
Alex

June 21st, 2007 at 7:11 am

Hey guys, it’s Alex from KickApps. Thanks everyone for your support and interest in what we’re doing. We’ve been working hard this year to deliver better and more useful tools for developers to build communities at their own websites. As always, let us know if you have any comments, feedback and suggestions.

Quick point in response to YouTubeSearcher’s post. Yes, DNS masking is important, but the key point is that our philosophy is to offer publishers and developers complete control over their communities at their own URL’s. Widget building and customizable video players are also ways we hope to empower developers. For us empowering developers it what it’s all about.

Also, our pricing is based on pay-for-performance. Simply put, you pay us based on how well you do. The more successful you are, the happier we all are.

Oh, BTW, check out how Vibe’s using KickApps. http://www.vibeverses.com.

Take care everyone,
Alex
andy carvin

June 21st, 2007 at 8:06 am

re: open source social networking platforms, what about ELGG? Has anyone tried it?
Miles

June 21st, 2007 at 10:59 am

I think its also important to note that helping people focus on building a successful community is just as big or bigger than the laundry list of features & functions offered. The days of the ‘built it and they will come’ social network are numbered (if not already over) and in offering our platform in a way that really adds value is the real goal from out standpoint.

At Small World (http://www.smallworldlabs.com) working with people like the American Cancer Society, Special Olympics, Hyperion/Oracle & The Dallas Morning News to build communities using our platform and making sure its inline with their goals for growing the community.

Starting with a strong platform is really just a first step.
Maddog

June 21st, 2007 at 6:51 pm

I’ve been talking to the people at GroupMembersInternational.com. They have what the claim is an enterprise level hosted and managed platform. I get my own domain, my users get email addresses with my domain and all the normal features and more.

They are more expensive, but they are older guys and have business experience that i don’t have. I looked at Kickapps and Community Server and although inexpensive, i didn’t want ads and i didn’t want to manage the site.

I am doing this project for a large corporation and when i looked at staffing the project development and then hiring moderators and people to manage the site, it looked like a nightmare. Not only that, but they can have it up in a short time.
Michael Assad

June 22nd, 2007 at 10:41 am

Correction about API from Aaron Bollinger at Kickapps: “The API’s will come out this summer.”